The Mental Debt Struggle...

beanielou

@DancingInTheRain The joys of being ill or disabled. Having to tell the same people the same thing time and time again. The secret cost of this to the NHS is very high as well of the time of the health professionals who have to provide the evidence. So so exhausting for the claimant.

DancingInTheRain

100% agree @beanielou my nephew has been deaf since birth and with the best will in the world this will never change but yet still has to reapply, utter waste of resources, everyone's time and unnecessary additional stress on the claimant ❤️

Keedie

Thank you @Baileys_Babe, you're a genius! I think a reminder is a great idea. I have a notebook that I was writing all of my notes in for this renewal. So I will add to notebook and I'll keep with the folder of documents. I do need to learn some more self compassion. I am quite hard on myself and tend to give others more grace than I give myself. But I do need to work on that.

I think the DWP like to test people @DancingInTheRain and I guess some lucky people do get better and so they might need less help. But it feels like the whole set up is assuming that everyone is making a fraudulent claim and the onus is on the claimant to disprove it 🤷🏾‍♀️. Or maybe I'm just cynical and jaded due to fact that I find life to be such a challenge, and that just makes me paranoid 🥴. My eldest sister is autistic with high and complex needs, and like your nephew, she still has to reapply and when she was moved from DLA to PIP, they initially rejected the claim and wanted proof that she was autistic. Why would they have been paying DLA for several years if she didn't need it in the first place?? It's truly baffling.

And you're right @beanielou, it is a waste of NHS resources and time and one of the many burdens of being disabled. Especially when you "don't look" disabled, as I'm frequently told, as if I making things up for attention 🙄. I joke and tell my son that all of those encounters and my daily struggles are part of my character development and the plot twists of my Crippled Chronicles. I don't think he saw the joke at first. But if you don't laugh, you cry, so now we have a giggle about it together and Silver looks at us like we've lost our minds 😂.

And yes, my son is doing much better thank you. He has been scared to ride his moped very far (although he won't admit that), and so he was mainly accepting South London jobs, but yesterday he went to East London and North London and today he was in West London. So he's more settled within himself, which is good. He's learning that adulting isn't always that fun when you have to work when there a much better things to be doing with your time (like watching World Cup matches in the early hours of the morning despite needing to get up, because "it's football…⚽️"). He does make me laugh. He's been counting down the days until it started.

I had a good but tiring day with my mum. I went to an online webinar about self assessment and bookkeeping (more interesting than it sounds 😂), and she did her weekly pilates class and then we met up and got the bus to have lunch and go to clothes shopping. We planned to go a Wetherspoons and it was closed, but there was a Pizza Express across the road. So we went there instead and the waitress was so nice, she told me that the Romana pizzas are £3 if you the have the app, which I did and forgot to 'check-in'. That took £16 off the bill, so I was well chuffed!

My clothing sinking fund that I have been squirreling money into for the last year and a bit has been depleted. Oh dear 🫣. Anyways, I managed to get some chino shorts in M&S, as well as some bootcut jeans and some jeggings, a few tops and underwear. My mum was buying lovely soft pastels and flowing style clothes and I had a basket of virtually black and navy blue items. She laughed at my obsession with always wearing black. If blue wasn't my favourite colour, I would wear all black. But I sometimes like a splash of colour, and wear a bit of pink. But I usually stick to black or navy bottoms and black, navy blue, white and sometimes grey tops. I think my mum thinks I'm boring, but I love it. I used to be somewhat of a fashionista back in my late teens and early twenties, and even then I wore a lot of black, just different styles. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the lady in M&S that did my purchases was kind enough to let me sit in the closed changing room whilst I waited for mum to do some food shopping. I'm in bed with a hot water bottle, my feet raised and a desperate craving for a glass or rose 😋. But my can of coke will have to suffice…

beanielou

Passes a mini bottle rose Prosecco.
How is Silver?